


Shall We Write Us Into the Dust?

by Kanthia



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Genre: Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-18
Updated: 2017-02-18
Packaged: 2018-09-25 09:55:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9814277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kanthia/pseuds/Kanthia
Summary: After the end: dinner, an argument, and Zelda and Link have to decide what to do next.





	

**Author's Note:**

> _The past is epilogue._  
>  \-- Isaac Asimov

Dinner that night is a celebration: the good people of Skyloft come together to celebrate Link and Zelda’s homecoming at one large table, swapping stories and their pieces of the world. There is talk of demons and sharing of gratitude and an absurd amount of pumpkin soup, and motions are made toward moving to a new home on the earth.

Link eats quietly and slowly, feeling strangely empty, as he listens to Zelda and Groose argue spiritedly about whether or not the Sacred Realm and the Triforce should be sealed away. Zelda thinks that it should, to prevent Demise or some other evil king from sneaking their way in; Groose disagrees, thinks it should be left open, so that anyone can pop in to see what it’s like. Link does not speak. Link cannot speak. The Silent Realm has done something to him, and he does not know what to make of it.

So he steps outside of the bazaar, drinks in Skyloft at night: the round disc of the moon, the brilliant light of the stars, his world peaceful at long last. It is not a good feeling. For so long he had felt that strange tug of _work to do_ , and now he is left with – nothing.

“Will you come, then?” Zelda has emerged. She meets him at the edge of the Plaza, where he is looking down to the clouds below. “Will you go down with us?” To this Link nods; he is surprised that she had even considered him wanting to stay behind.

She sits at the edge of the dock, motioning for him to sit beside her. He does. “I don’t think I am Hylia any longer,” she says, more to the moon than to him. “But I am left with the memory of her knowledge, and the memory of knowledge is called ‘wisdom’. And _you_ –” She pokes him in the chest, for effect, “– Are left with the memory of having survived a great danger, and that memory is called ‘courage’.”

He does not understand. “You don’t understand,” she says. He shakes his head, and she laughs. “They’ll call you ‘hero’, in time, and they’ll call me ‘princess’, but it all amounts to the same thing in the end, really. May I play the harp?” He passes her the lute, and she begins to play a lullaby, humming along softly.

He's tired. He thinks of the person he once was, and the person he has become. He thinks of high places and holes in the ground, of deep water and the great whale in the sky, of the brief flashes of the future he saw when the Triforce was first whole – of Groose, Demise and Ghirahim sharing a body at twilight; of the Master Sword sleeping in a forest, waiting for the hero’s return; of a castle sleeping beneath an ocean; of someone who is both Impa and Zelda, playing the lute for him once again.

“I’ll seal off the Sacred Realm,” she says, after some time. “And the Triforce within it. But we’ll leave a gateway – the Master Sword.” He bristles at the words, or is it an ill wind? “I think the Triforce has chosen us, Link, but I do not know who the third bearer will be. I’ll build my home in the forest, near the seal, and Groose has talked of making a home out in the desert…”

 _...And we will never call Skyloft home again,_ Link thinks, unhappily, staring down at the clouds, as though he can see through them.  _Shall we write us into the dust, then,_ _carve ourselves into the stones, bound to become nothing but desert and dry bones?_

“…I don’t know what will happen,” she says, standing. “I think we’ve started something very, very big. But things will turn out as things will turn out, you know?”

Link thinks of the Thunder Dragon. Lanayru Desert had been green, once; even the old gods wither away and die. Would he rather be immortalized in legend, forced to do some strange gods' bidding? Or is it better to fade away, become forgotten?

Link does not know.

(Most choose to stay in the sky. The sky had been their home for generations, and they had no desire to feel the unending pull of gravity nor to breathe the dense air of the surface. They would stay up in the air and be with their birds. The earth was still a place to fear, and would not belong to them -- but to their children, and their children’s children, and their children's children's children.

For them Link left the Clawshots, and the promise that he might one day return.

They would become great city-builders, in time; but time will not be kind to them, and when a Link finally returns the people of the City in the Sky will have become strange, pitiful things…)

**Author's Note:**

> cleaned this one up from 2013.
> 
> find me on [tumblr](http://kanthia.tumblr.com/) <3


End file.
